


Vulkanite Heresy - Biographica

by Auroch- (Auroch)



Series: Vulkanite Heresy [3]
Category: Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-16 20:55:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28962777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Auroch/pseuds/Auroch-
Summary: Assorted stories of specific individuals and biographical accounts of groups.
Series: Vulkanite Heresy [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2096220





	Vulkanite Heresy - Biographica

It took Him two centuries to make us, the first time.

Before the astartes, before the Thunder Warriors, before Unification, before The Emperor, he was secluded in the Himalazian Mountains. I don't know how long before he had carved those chambers from the rock; most likely during the Age of Technology or earlier. But after he returned from his slow trip to Molech by lighthugger, he retreated there for his preparations. I believe he had plans for Custodes before he set out on that voyage, but the first of the Ten Thousand took him a month to create nonetheless. Or, so they say; none of us were there to witness it, and the firstborn of us - all those of the Twelve, in fact - died during Unification. That was not unusual; the unusual aspect is that they were not interred in battle-constructs or cogitator-coffins as most of my elder brothers were after their deaths. Our Father guards his secrets carefully, and if there are a few he does not wish to be shared even with his most devoted sons, next to the many He trusts us with I do not begrudge Him that.

It is recorded that he had finished the Twelve six months later, and dedicated the next year to training them. They went down the mountains together, the Twelve and the man who still was known as The Master. They brought in other scientists with larger labs, and the Thunder Warrior project began to take shape. And back in the private lab under the Roof of the World, with only Himself and the elder Custodes attending, the Twelve became the Twenty, then the Fifty, then the Hundred. It was five years into the project when we reached that number; Valdor was among the second fifty, and is the only one of those still alive, but two dozen are dreadnoughts now - many of those spent a few centuries in cogitator-coffins assisting in the labs, but when we recovered the Fettered and He built his fallen angel a battle-body, most of my brothers were transferred to bodies operating along the same principles and rejoined the fight with us. We were The Hundred when the Thunder Warriors had their first implantations. They were introduced to Him as the Emperor, a name we knew He intended to take and keep, but which the world did not yet know. Two tiny kingdoms away from the town where we had found our collaborators, the Thunder Warriors took the field, the Twelve bodyguarding our Father and most of us, around forty, aboard jetbikes, watching the Thunder Warriors from the flanks, ready to finish the job if they proved inadequate or cull their herd if they proved too dangerous.

They did not; they conquered the petty kingdom with savagery, speed, and power. The Emperor assumed the form by which the Imperium would know him, and delivered the little king his ultimatum: kneel to The Emperor and become governor of the region in an empire that would encompass the planet soon enough, or die a sovereign. He chose death. As did the next king, and the next. At that time He returned with a small guard to the town in which he had found collaborators, and told both his collaborators and their king that he had conquered two of the neighbors and one more beyond that, and intended to conquer more. In deference to the stability and protection his collaboration had received, he promised he would not attack this kingdom unless it attacked his fledgling Imperium first or the Imperium spanned the rest of the globe, and made the further offer that if the king pledged that he or his heir would offer the Emperor fealty in a century's time, he would further guarantee to come to their defense against any aggressor. The petty king thanked him but declined. In a month's time, when he had collected better espionage on the capabilities of the Thunder Warriors, he asked if the offer was still available, and accepted it. Ten years later, we were Five Hundred, and the Thunder Warriors were two thousand, though another thousand had been made, sent into battle, and lost, as had twenty of our own number. Most of Old Qin was Imperial, by then, and we were beginning to invade the Pacific Basin. The Imperium continued to expand, and so did our ranks; the Emperor found the time to complete roughly three of us per month, but still had not yet found other genetors skilled enough to work on our creation and trustworthy enough to be told the secrets needed for that task. That pace continued for a century, creating only a dozen and a half each year but with attrition always low, unlike the Thunderers, so that we were the Two Thousand by 600 of M29. As He gathered the best genetors Terra had to offer, the rate increased after that; we were Five Thousand by 650, and the final Ten Thousand number was reached in 703. I believe that accelerated pace was also used to test how well the astartes project could be accelerated with extra hands, though as rejuvenat was not as accessible under those circumstances, even with expert genetors gathered to work together, only the top experts would be preserved long enough to work on it directly.

I am an elder of the brotherhood now, but I was one of the last thousand made then. There was a formal ceremony where all ten thousand marched on the parade grounds, in front of the assembled genewrights and generals. From that point, we were deployed in war regularly. At any given time, some of us were still assisting in the gene-labs (where we were minor but valuable contributors), or supervising the expansion of the Himalazian complex to the palace it became, but generally only those who were wounded and needed time to heal. Which company acted as bodyguard for The Emperor Himself also shifted frequently, as He always made an effort to keep personally acquainted with each of us, His dearest. Besides being deployed directly, throughout Unification, we were often attached as "strategic liasions". Though we are excellent strategists, apart from a few prodigies we were merely slightly better than the best mortal humanity had to offer, even the humanity of Old Terra. So while this was not an outright lie, it was rarely the true primary role we played. At those times, our primary role was, almost always, as the sheepdogs to the Thunder Warriors. They were so strong they could overpower anyone but the Emperor, Malcador, or a psyker of similar power, but unlike mortals, we were strong enough to hold them at bay for a while. They were too fast for mortal eyes to block, but we were faster still. So when a company began to age, with the mental deterioration that entailed, their every deployment was accompanied by several squads of Custodes, 'scouting' on jetbikes and 'advising' the mortal command staff. The supposed scouts were really riding herd, ready to turn from sheepdog to wolf when necessary. The command advisors were primarily bodyguards, with their actual advice being a distant third priority behind protecting the command staff and concealing the fact that they and the scouts were operating under false pretenses. This became more and more common as Unification neared completion and the Thunder Warriors ceased to be replaced. As the primarch project completed and then had its results snatched away, and then later as the astartes legions grew battle-ready and were tested on Terra, we watched, and guarded, and fought. And then Unification was complete. In one of the final battles, the Onslaught of Gaduare, the Thunder Warriors went feral en masse, creating a pointless massacre despite the best efforts of the few who kept their wits (chief among those was Arik Taranis, for which he was called the Victor of Gaduare and Lightning Bearer).

The last battle of Unification was the conquest of Mount Ararat. The Emperor had deliberately left it uncontrolled, allowing a number of religious zealot groups to occupy it. Allowing the believers to flee to the mountain rather than bow to the Imperial Truth made Unification easier, and while I am not sure, I believe that he intended Ararat to be the last stand of the Thunder Warriors, either from the beginning or from some point a century or more before Unification completed. No Army was present, nor even astartes; only the entirety of the Thunder Legion, the Emperor, Malcador, and the majority of the Ten Thousand. We were disguised behind a psychic illusion Malcador raised, so that even the canny Thunder Warriors like General Taranis could not notice that as they encircled the mountain, we encircled them. They charged up the mountain, and the fighting was bloody. They were unstoppable wrecking balls of flesh and ceramite, but there were many dark sorcerers among the Ararat Arkists and all of the Arkists were fervent zealots willing to fight to the end. Once battle was joined, a great many Thunder Warriors became feral, as they had at Gaduare. I was present at both, and Ararat was substantially more severe. At Gaduare, two thousand Thunder Warriors were present, out of an original total of around one hundred thousand; of these, about twelve hundred went feral, though only two or three hundred stayed totally lucid. At Ararat, all three thousand remaining Thunder Warriors were present, and of those three thousand, less than a hundred, and most likely only two dozen or less, resisted the feral madness. I have long suspected that deliberate psychic manipulation was involved, though Father never commented on the subject. The slaughter lasted six hours, after which every single zealot on Ararat, and all but five hundred Thunder Warriors, lay dead. The Thunder Warriors were almost all wounded, most grievously, but still enraged, and despite the efforts of the few lucid leaders they fought each other. I believe we waited just about one full hour while they whittled each other down, and then three thousand of the Golden Brotherhood, or Custodians as we're now called, descended on them from all sides, charging on our jetbikes. It was mercifully brief; they had become beasts, and would have become worse if they were permitted to live, but each of them had been a valiant soldier for the Imperium for decades, so we took no more joy in killing them than the owner of a dog who has become rabid does in putting down his companion. Taranis had been killed by his brethren before we struck, which I think we were all thankful for; he had overcome the deficiencies of his nature and earned our respect, even before Gaduare. Of course, later we learned that he had faked his death and resurfaced in the leadup to the Siege of Terra. How he lived that long, I do not know, so perhaps he still lives. I imagine the Eyes have looked for him.

But let me return to the history of many, rather than one. After those dark deeds, Unification was officially declared, and we spent the better part of a decade consolidating Terra before beginning the Crusade. Enforcing the Imperial Truth with more rigor was a large part of that, and for that task the Emperor set those he could most rely on: the Ten Thousand, and the hand-picked legion of outcasts, Legio XVII, the Iconoclasts. I was not present for the final piece of that campaign, when the Emperor personally destroyed the Church of the Lightning Stone, so if you wish to hear that tale, ask another. But the last church of Terra fell, and that same week the Emperor delivered his ultimatum to Luna: kneel, or be kneeled. They refused, three legions of astartes struck with full force, the Sixteenth claimed a name for themselves, and the Crusade began. It was a large change for us; as the astartes increased in number and were deployed in force, there was much less role for us in combat. We served as the Emperor's honor guard, but for the most part we were his representatives and diplomats, not his warriors. Any given year, half of us would be in the Sol system, working with Malcador to govern and rebuild Terra. We were not yet called the Custodians - the name the Adeptus Custodes came centuries later, after Ullanor - but that was the period where we became custodians, in my estimation. There were still times we fought; the Talons of the Emperor were present for the first visit to the Eye of Terror, which needed to be fortified but which our Father considered a secret he did not trust anyone but his closest to learn. And when parts of legions or the Imperial Army turned their coats, we were often there to put them down, and with those who had worked closely with them to watch them for signs they would imitate their former comrades. But they were the exceptions.

We watched Lorgar closely, after Monarchia, though not closely enough. We were prepared to do the same for Vulkan, but the Emperor did not ask it of us. Could it have prevented the Heresy War, if we had? I doubt it. Even we did not truly understand the corrupting power of Chaos, which is a large part of how we missed Lorgar's execution of the observers we placed with his legion and subversion of the astropathic relays they had used to send reports. It was a depth we did not realize a primarch could sink to so rapidly, and so I doubt observing another case closely would have been enlightening. But regardless of might-have-beens, it happened; Horus was killed, the Istvaan Accord happened, the Atrocity happened, and the galaxy burned. All hands were on deck, and we rejoined the battle in person, in many theaters. I personally fought in many battles; my proudest achievement was in the Second Battle of Gorro, where we faced the corrupted Reforged and I personally slew three of their dreadnoughts. But ultimately we pulled back to Terra; a siege was coming, we all knew it was inevitable, and, though we did not know it, the Webway was vulnerable. That project remained secret, guarded even within our ranks, and so until we returned to the Himalazian Mountains we did not know that is where we were bound.

The Emperor was surprised by the ability for the daemons to navigate the Webway and fight within it; he had analyzed this in the past and determined that it was alien to them and a coherent opposition would be impossible for them to muster, despite their obvious motivation to do so. The Webway could be concealed from humanity, but in the Warp it was a bridge being built from the tip of a lighthouse: impossible to miss. That they managed a surprise attack anyway we initially blamed on Magnus's Folly; the Thousand Sons who rang a gong at the doorway, attracting all manner of Warp beasts. Father was hard-pressed, despite the Sisters of Silence at his side and the Companions of our number, and even with His personal intervention while Magnus took the Golden Throne to stabilize the Astronomican. The daemonic army seemed to understand all our strategies as well as we did, and had an entirely uncharacteristic degree of intelligent coordination between the forces of all four Great Powers of Chaos.

It lasted weeks before our Father considered the true possibility. Partially this was a sign of how hard-fought the war was, but mostly it was a sign of the trust he had placed in his strong left hand. Every betrayal in the Heresy War wounded him, but Malcador turning to the Dark Powers cut far deeper than any other; only Vulkan's fall was close. That we learned later that Malcador was, in truth, dead, a traitor and the killer of Horus but not a slave to ruin, his body hollowed out into a puppet for another dark general - Be'Lakor - was some small comfort. But then we felt the sorrow, but the renewed purpose, and strategic guidance: the daemons were led by a mind nearly the equal of the Emperor's own, with thorough knowledge of pre-existing plans for defense of the Webway, and a near-perfect ability to visualize, model, and predict the vagaries of the Eldar Webway network as well as the extensions He was building. We waged total war, destroying junctions with cauterizing blows to cut off flanking attacks and seeing others ripped into unstable Warp fountains which temporarily allowed daemons to flow in en masse before their instability broke them off from the network. We were winning.

But we weren't winning fast enough.

The Siege was drawing closer, and not a man or woman of the Talons could be spared for it. The Sages, Hydra, and Fists did an excellent job of slowing the traitor advance and bleeding them before they could reach Terra Herself... but they were still advancing. And it became clear that we could not drive the daemons out before the advance reached Terra and besieged the Palace, not unless we could destroy the unholy fusion known as Ma'lkador. And, equally, that he/they knew this, and was reveling in the despair it caused and holding back from the front lines to prevent us circumventing it.

The Emperor is very intelligent, and very wise. But this does not render him completely immune to human biases. Without the Webway Extension, his dream of lasting victory over Chaos and an awakened society of humanity spanning the stars was unachievable; he had determined this before Unification began, and it shaped his decisions throughout the Crusade. So while he had an _urgent_ threat to focus on, he ignored the more _important_ question of whether he should shut down the extension, close the doors and turn off the lights, and redeploy Himself and the Talons to the Siege. Because the answer was yes, and he knew it, but abandoning your dreams is no easier for a godlike mind, not when your dreams are also godlike in detail and scope. So it was that not until the war on Terra reached a critical condition, where we were in danger of losing the Palace, did he finally confront the necessity, pull the Talons - and the Centuria Magnifica, by that time - out of the Webway, and disable it, leaving Magnus powering the Astronomican solely to maintain the 'Beacon Anathema' which weakened Chaos's ability to project force in Sol space.

He left. He fought. He was mortally wounded twice over. He destroyed one son utterly, and sent another back to his dark master's bosom to reincarnate years later, as daemon princes do. He returned to the Throne. He passed on.

The Vestige never was as close with us as He had been in true life. Remembering us each by name and deeds was not crucial to His task, so He sacrificed it. I believe Valdor, always His most favored son, was the only one who He remembered as well as ever. We all looked up to Valdor even before then, so I did not begrudge him it. More of a shock was that the Golden Companions were to be dissolved. The Ten Thousand, by then numbering under four thousand due to the attrition in the Webway, were split up, mixed with seed populations from the Centuria, the Sisters, and others, creating new orders that would be the living will of the Emperor long after he could no longer sustain Himself as the Vestige. This was when we received the name 'Custodians'; He said that we had been the guardians of his person in life, and would become the guardians of his ideals and memory in death. We rarely use the name for ourselves, though; to us, the _Vestige_ is the Custodian, placing the Imperium into custodianship so that it could endure for a long duration.

  
Personally, I remained one of the last of the 'official' Custodes; I witnessed the Vestige pass on, and stayed to carry out his instructions for another century. As was outlined, when the task I and a dozen brothers were needed for was complete, we said our goodbyes to Valdor and dispersed. Six of them joined the endless Vigil of the Dead, to various Walls; it has become the place the Imperium assigns its loyal, proven-competent, but inconvenient sons and daughters, and this we certainly were. I had a shorter - the shortest, in fact - journey: to Luna, where I entered the labs of the Provost-General of the Omnissio Classis. I had already grown old, by then, and was not fit for battle, or even for precision lab work. It was not long before I, like my elder brothers had long ago, was placed in a cogitator-coffin to assist as a disembodied mind, analyzing and advising the Provosts on which gene-lines were trustworthy and which were suited to different locations the High Lords had requested receive new Foundings. I spend the lion's share of years asleep, now, waking once in a decade to revise my analysis or answer questions. I have spoken to at least forty distinct Provosts-General, though they blur together, and infer that there have been equally many, particularly in recent centuries, who refuse to solicit my help or are unaware of it. Some day, I shall be forgotten, and I will sleep without waking until the crack of doom, when the end times come and every once-Custodes is placed into a Dreadnought and turned loose to defend Terra against another Siege. Or, in my fonder dreams, when the long slow work of the Magnificat and Greyblades reaches fruition, Chaos is defanged, the Webway Extension rebuilt, and I can walk once more in the impossible city of Calastar secure in the knowledge that humanity has a glorious future before it.

Until that day, I serve. Even in death, duty does not end.


End file.
